Murray further elaborated he thinks Kane is a player the Sabres need to become a playoff team.

“So I’m not going to back down on that now, but I can tell you that I’m not making calls trying to trade him. I’m not throwing rumors out there or getting a media guy to help me out and say, ‘Evander is available,’ (or) that type of thing. Not at all. He’s the type of guy I think we need if we want to be competitive every night and be a playoff team.”

Murray might see Kane as a building block, but even if he’d like to, I can’t imagine Kane would generate all that much trade value. He’s injury prone, has a relatively high cap hit and has a plethora of off-ice issues. A team trading for Kane would be making one hell of a risk.

There’s little doubt Kane is a talented hockey player, as he’s got 16 goals which is more than a 30-goal pace if he was healthy. But, his off-ice and injury issues make him less of an asset than one might think. Good on Murray for supporting his player publicly. But, if he gets a good trade offer, I can’t imagine he thinks twice about trading him.